Gambia Colony and Protectorate

The Gambia Colony and Protectorate was the British colonial administration of The Gambia from 1821 to 1965. Its nucleus was the colony around Bathurst, now Banjul, where British presence dated from 1816, together with Fort James, founded in 1815 farther up the river. The protectorate covered the inland territory along the Gambia River and was formally declared in 1894. For various periods the settlement was subordinate to the Sierra Leone Colony, but by 1888 it had become a colony in its own right with a permanently appointed governor. The precise boundary with French Senegal was long disputed; in 1889 Britain and France agreed in principle to fix it ten kilometres north and south of the river as far as Yarbutenda, and a joint boundary commission mapped the line from 1891. The economy depended overwhelmingly on groundnuts, which made the colony vulnerable to price swings and encouraged smuggling into Senegal. The Gambia became independent within the Commonwealth on 18 February 1965, with Dawda Jawara as prime minister.